The Kanalratten manifesto

We define female paedophilia as love between girls and adult women which is voluntary and includes sexual satisfaction; it is not a form of domination over other people since it is a form of life in which we have no need to dominate or possess children.

We wish to live without power over children and without the lifeless sexuality of adults. Adult sexuality means the destruction of life and the environment. The destruction of the environment precedes the destruction of child sexuality. Relationships with children other than those in the permitted categories of family, upbringing, home, and education are either not allowed or criminalized. Any attempt to break out of this machine of death is prevented. We consider contacts which involve pressure, coercion, extortion, or prohibition to be incidences of violence rather than paedophilia. Those who claim that paedophilia consists of abuse, rape, and sadistic force are furthering the fascist discrimination of paedophile love. For us, however, it is fascist to imprison children in families so that no other kinds of relationships are possible. Paedophilia is our only means of preventing motherhood from being the only permitted dorm of living together with children. We attack the rapist father, but in no way allow ourselves to be forced into a motherly power relationship/dependency. We demand that children be given rights rather than protection, so that they can escape from families which they do not like or where they are mistreated.

The emancipation of women is not possible without the emancipation of children and childhood. A satisfying sexuality cannot be achieved without discussing the forbidden/suppressed topics of lesbian and child sexuality, without abolishing the divisions between body zones, sexuality and tenderness, sexual and non-sexual areas, age differences, and work. They try to separate every girl and woman from her sexuality so that they can later only function as sperm receptacles and mothers.

Girls are destroyed by adults so that their resistance is broken and they let themselves be treated as victims and protected. They must put up with everything until they give in and are no longer able to resist the macho state. They then pass on this inability to other girls, rather than joining with them to offer resistance.

Abused children are divided into categories: a great fuss is made over those who can be reintegrated into society, but children who resist even the most obnoxious social workers or unwarranted meddling in their private lives receive no support. They are put out on the street, get involved with drugs, prostitution, attempt suicide, or they wind up rather quickly in homes, the child psychiatry circuit, or they are again destroyed by families. Even voluntary relationships end up in court or under the control of the childprotection agencies, who then forbid all contact, put children into psychotherapy, or place them in homes, psychiatric institutions, and prisons. Children are forced to live together with adults in stifling relationships where no sexuality is allowed.

None of this is considered abuse. When things turn out otherwise this lie becomes visible and there is talk of manipulation, the creation of dependency, power, etc., without questioning the nature of the relationships in which the adults themselves are trapped.

Almost all women who have tender and sexual feelings for children are afraid to pursue their wishes and needs and to respond to those of children, because these relationships are legally prosecuted and their social therapeutic nature is destroyed. The current campaigns which are supposedly directed against "sexual abuse" underscore the tightening of conventional morality, the suppression of our sexuality and the control of children. By being placed in solitary confinement a girl is prevented from having experiences, trying things out for herself to find out what she likes and does not like. Instead she is burdened with completely alien desires, all of this supposedly to protect her.

They know that children can become sexually excited, but they forbid sexual gratification. No opposition to families, schools, homes, and the whole moral world remains; rather their influence is becoming ever more widespread. Special courses for teachers, training programs to teach kindergarten children to say "no" and other such devices to protect children are contrivances to help and protect adults and the state, because they do not allow children to say "yes." They are the complement to or the substitute for male violence. We are the victims when the "wildwasser" women,1 the Emma journalists2 and other campaigners make no distinction between relationships based on mutual consent and relationships based on force. But they force us to live according to their ideas which they think are suitable for our modern times. We do not want to give any state money to the "wildwassers" nor do we want to help the pedagogues to control us, but we want to live with children.

The discussion will be continued.

Kanalratten, Berlin, 1989

Notes
1. Wildwasser is a shelter for "sexually abused" children.
2. "Emma" is a German feminist magazine